and don’t miss this, just 2 months ago (9 months after that acquisition):

Pfizer to Pay $2.3 Billion for Fraudulent Marketing

Justice Department Announces Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History

“…Pfizer has agreed to pay $1 billion [table scraps] to resolve allegations under the civil False Claims Act that the company illegally promoted four drugs—Bextra; Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug; Zyvox, an antibiotic; and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug—and caused false claims to be submitted to government health care programs for uses that were not medically accepted indications and therefore not covered by those programs. The civil settlement also resolves allegations that Pfizer paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe these, as well as other, drugs. The federal share of the civil settlement is $668,514,830 and the state Medicaid share of the civil settlement is $331,485,170. This is the largest civil fraud settlement in history against a pharmaceutical company.”

“The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic
Spending Priorities: An Updated Analysis:”

“We show that investments in clean energy, health care,
and education create a much larger number of jobs across
all pay ranges, including mid-range jobs (paying between
$32,000 and $64,000) and high-paying jobs (paying over
$64,000). Channeling funds into clean energy, health
care and education in an effective way will therefore
create significantly greater opportunities for decent
employment throughout the U.S. economy than spending the
same amount of funds with the military. a project of the
Institute for Policy Studies The U.S. government spent
an estimated $624 billion on the military in 2008. This
amounts to about $2,000 for every resident of the
country.”

“Amid the debates on the political and strategic merits
of the Iraq war, one aspect of military spending that
has been largely neglected is its effects on the U.S.
economy. Six hundred twenty-four billion dollars is a
vast sum of money-greater than the combined GDP of
Sweden and Thailand, and eight times the amount of U.S.
federal spending on education.”

from:

The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic
Spending Priorities: An Updated Analysis
By Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier
Foreign Policy in Focus
October 9, 2009http://www.fpif.org/pdf/0910Jobs_report1.pdf

“The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been
home to the Dongria Kondh long before there was a
country called India or a state called Orissa. The
hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over
the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now
these hills have been sold for the bauxite they
contain. For the Kondh it’s as though god had been
sold. They ask how much god would go for if the god
were Ram or Allah or Jesus Christ….

If the flat-topped hills are destroyed, the forests
that clothe them will be destroyed, too. So will the
rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate
the plains below. So will the Dongria Kondh. So will
the hundreds of thousands of tribal people who live in
the forested heart of India, and whose homeland is
similarly under attack.

In our smoky, crowded cities, some people say, “So
what? Someone has to pay the price of progress.” Some
even say, “Let’s face it, these are people whose time
has come. Look at any developed country – Europe, the
US, Australia – they all have a ‘past’.” Indeed they
do. So why shouldn’t “we”?”

Of particular interest above is the paragraph with what people say in it. I’m always wondering what people are thinking when decisions like hacking up an entire mountain range are made. Now I know. Humans are a shortsighted lot. With mounds of mounting evidence, we plunge ahead. It’s like a madness, a sickness.

Yes, we do seem to need forms of energy and building materials, but hacking our planet out from underneath us to get it, and allowing corporate businesses run by rich greedy predators to swoop into communities with the help of the military to accomplish their ends seems to me a soul emptying enterprise.

But what else is new?

Round and round we go…maybe it’s because the planet is round; maybe it’s because our heads are round; maybe it’s because we have no new original ideas…?

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